As a safety precaution, it is nowadays becoming increasingly desirable or necessary to provide tamper-evident tablets in addition to tamper-evidence packaging for tablets of medicaments etc. It is known to enrobe tablets in gelatin for this purpose by dipping tablets into gelatin solution and allowing the solution to dry to form a coating. The gelatin solution may be coloured, and it is known to produce dual colour gelatin coatings, e.g. by coating the entire tablet with, say, yellow gelatin and then, after drying, coating half of the tablet with, say, red gelatin. This produces an attractive, tamper-evident tablet. However, the process involves several steps and is time consuming, even with single coating processes, as long drying times are involved. Further, problems are associated with use of gelatin in ingestible products as gelatin is an animal-derived material, obtained from the bones and skins of animals such as cattle, and there are increasing concerns over use of such materials in ingestible products in view of fear of animal related diseases such as Bovine Spongiform Enceptialopathy (BSE).
The present invention provides an alternative approach to tablet enrobing not necessarily using gelatin coatings.